OLE BJØRN KRÜGER, Norway — circa 1970

Ole Bjørn Krüger (1922–2007) was a Norwegian ceramicist who made his tables the way a painter works a canvas, with the tabletop as the picture. Here, broad strokes of chalk-white glaze cut across a ground of glittering, almost volcanic black, and the joints between the hand-made tiles are left to show, so the pattern breaks up like a mosaic.

The top sits on a blackened steel base of three curved legs, braced in the middle. It's simple enough to let the ceramic do the talking.

Krüger signed his work, and his OBK monogram is fired into the glaze near the edge. Most of Krüger's tables turn up as timber-framed rectangles. A round top on a steel base is far rarer, and in all our years we haven't seen another quite like it. It's the kind of piece that gets talked about every time someone puts a cup of coffee down on it.

108 cm diameter × 50 cm high.

Condition: very good vintage condition, with no chips to the ceramic.